The birth of a daughter is regarded as a calamity. Looming large on the horizon of the dejected parents’ minds is the dowry that they will have to slave to put together when the girl is married off. An advertisement for amniocentesis, the medical test misused for sex determination and the consequent abortion of female foetuses, sums it up succinctly “Better pay Rs 500 now than Rs 5 lakhs later.” It’s high time one stops killing girl children in their mother’s wombs.” Girl infants are left to die – sometimes drowned or given poison by their own parents who perceive a daughter as an economic burden. One fails to understand why girls are denied a right to live in some communities and why are women still the most chronically undernourished sections of the population? It seems waiting for the real changes to occur for women in India is rather like waiting for god.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
